Welcome to my 80wpm plateau..

Aaah yes.. after spending a little while back in the day struggling to get past 60wpm, I’m now stuck in 80wpm town with to 90wpm hurdle seeming impossible to get over.

It all started so promising, what with the tin foil imagery at the end of the race, and my euphoria after passing 80wpm with two mistakes.

I seem to start off ok listening to dictations, tracking the speaker and generally doing alright. But it only (oni) takes one word (double sized w, d) to trip (tr blend, p) me up and it’s game over.

This is major (use a g instead of j) error time.

I need to get over this and just get something down for every word – a psychological battle that seems impossible.

The typical trip up words for me are stuff like ‘injuries’ – total ballache of a word, which from now on, I think I’ll write as ‘ing’ and have done with it.

Failing that, can everyone stop getting injured? (a la Lock Stock)

After a rant comes the good news – John Dickens took the 100wpm exam on Saturday (whose brainchild was it to hold exams on Saturdays?) and early indications show (god.. I should work for the lottery) that he passed it.

Immense! Well done John.

I’m not jealous, honest. In fact, I might put up a tent in 80wpm town as I love it so much and I could be here a while.*

*This is far too negative, forget I said that.

There was a little group of us on this side of the class who were united in trudging to the test room every time for a 90wpm check and then huffing all the way back ten minutes later saying now stock phrases such as “Well, that went well..” *rolling eyes* and “I missed out a whole sentence.. no wait, two.”

But then Anna Winter had to go and pass it, leaving us behind. Sob!!

I know I’ll get there eventually.. it’s just a case of powering on. I was even practising by scribbling along to the X Factor – although this means you write literally the same thing after every act..

“You made that song your own”

“You are what this competition is all about”

Or Dannii’s favourite: “You smashed it at the end”

Anything’s better than Dawn and Marie..